


trust the (slow) process

by euphonie



Category: Fate: The Winx Saga (TV), Winx Club
Genre: 3+1, F/M, Farah's Feelings, Gen, Headmistress Rosalind, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Introspection, Less Fluff than the Last, No One Taught Them How to Teach, Old Marrieds, One Shot, Slow Burn, The Golden Trio, War Leaves Wounds, Young Farah, chosen family, lean on me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 22:55:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29215278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/euphonie/pseuds/euphonie
Summary: Silva uses the back of his dagger to scratch at his head, mumbling, "Farah, why am I Headmaster if you won't listen to a single word I say?""Because the appearance of balance has its benefits," she huffs, pushing a stack of marked essays into his hands and shoving him out her door.(or, three times Farah charges ahead with her own plans for the students of Alfea, and one time she doesn't)
Relationships: Andreas & Farah Dowling & Ben Harvey & Saul Silva, Farah Dowling & Ben Harvey & Rosalind & Saul Silva, Farah Dowling & Rosalind, Farah Dowling & Saul Silva, Farah Dowling/Saul Silva
Comments: 10
Kudos: 89





	trust the (slow) process

**i. her first taste of teaching…**

…comes while she’s still a student. It is her final year, and she now understands what she’s capable of doing and knows that being different, in her case, means being _better_. She walks around Alfea with iron in her step, and steel in her gaze. _She’s changed_ , her classmates mutter, _she’s the Headmistress’s special student_. They stare at her when they think she can’t see them, wondering what higher magics Rosalind has taught her in the summers and long nights that they are not privy to.

No one questions it, then, when Rosalind leaves the school for three days, slinking off in the dead of night and leaving Farah in charge of her classes.

Farah hates it, but she’d agreed to Rosalind’s request because she has learned, the hard way, to spot when a request is not _really_ a request. It feels like her first day at college all over again – she knows better now than to show it on her face, but inside, she feels every pair of eyes from behind every pair of desks like daggers to her dreams, terrified that the moment she opens her mouth they will see her for the fraud she sometimes still feels she is.

Farah isn’t sure what to say, so she chooses to say nothing at all. And for the first years, _that is somehow far more frightening than if she’d spoken_. Instead, Farah spins on heel after a scan of their faces, and begins in silence to outline on the blackboard a spell they thought they weren’t meant to learn til midwinter. She doesn’t even have to tell them to start copying down her notes – one quick, stern glance backwards over her shoulder, and she can hear them scrambling to open notebooks and uncap pens, scribbling furiously to catch her diagrams before she disappears them to free up space.

Her students are so immersed in writing, her magic senses with satisfaction, that they have forgotten to feel the crippling lack of self-esteem holds back so many novice spellcasters. _She must keep them hopping_ , she thinks in a flash, _or the doubts will creep in like weeds_.

They have scarcely flexed the writing cramps from their fingers before she’s on them like lightning, peppering them with questions on theory and commanding them to demonstrate the spell’s gestures without magic. They seem cowed at first, then exhilarated, to be treated like adults. They can tell that she will not tolerate their failure, but it feels like it might be because she knows they can succeed. _How unlike Rosalind_ , they marvel later, drained from the day and sprawled in the common spaces, _is this what the upper classes are like_?

Farah’s triumph swells as the lesson proceeds; she is pushing them right out of the nest, and _now_ , she reckons, _they ought to fly!_ If she had done it, then why not them?

And that’s when it all goes to pieces. She has them turn to each other and put some power in it, to _channel_ their newfound confidence into the projection spell she has just taught them. _She should have_ , she figures in retrospect, _specified_ what _they should project_. Her own solitude had kept her out of the thick of teenage drama, but the first years were _full_ of feelings. And apparently, unafraid to act on them. She hadn’t known until the shouting started that she’d paired up the blonde with her ex-boyfriend, or the class’s meanest boys with its most meek. The timid first years turn quickly into a small mob, taking sides and hurling grievances at each other with utter disregard for her attempts to get things back in hand.

“How could I have known?!” she whines to Ben later, sulking over hot cocoa behind the carriage house, “I only read the names off alphabetically.”

**ii. purging rosalind from the school…**

…is much easier said than done. Farah doesn’t wish to upset the delicate balance of the school in transition, nor draw too many whispers at once from older students who had known Rosalind briefly as their teacher.

So she sneaks, soft-footed as a cat in the night, down one floor one week, and up another the next, quietly collecting every photograph and commemoration medallion she can find that features her former Headmistress. Saul, of course, catches her at it in a matter of days, and nearly takes her head off with his sword in the process.

Torn between exasperation and wild relief that he hasn’t beheaded her, he gasps at her to _stop prancing around in the dark_ , and just _explain_ to the students that Rosalind will not be coming back. “Like ripping off a bandage,” he proclaims, as if it’s a paper cut she’s staunching and not the gruesome arterial flow of a missing limb.

She will not have it. She is _convinced_ no one will notice, that she can vanish all traces of Alfea’s dark past with no one the wiser. “If I do it gradually,” she counters, “it won’t disrupt their studies.”

He will follow her anywhere, she knows, even if he grumbles about lost sleep and the dust gathering in the East Wing. And so they start traipsing through the dark together, regularly stealing away this memento or that to stash where the students are no longer allowed to go.

Saul, however, is far less stealthy than she is. _For all his grace in a fight_ , she rues, _the man walks this earth like an ogre_.

And their students – their hormonal, teenage students – don’t stay put in their own beds, either. She hadn’t anticipated that. It isn’t long before several students catch a glimpse of them disappearing into the dark together, and it takes just one scandalized late-night spa session in suite six to send the rumour mill into overdrive. Their minds invade hers one day when she’s supervising the athletics class, and she is damned grateful that the bitter cold gives her an excuse for rosy cheeks. The rendezvous her students have dreamed up for them range from romantic to raunchy, and she is _so absurdly glad_ that Silva has no magic to see the same mental images she can ( _although, a small part of her wonders, what_ would _he do if he did?_ )

She stops immediately, of course. She will not trade one stream of gossip for another.

In the end, she calls an assembly. She makes a short speech, each word forced out like teeth being pulled, about Rosalind’s great service to Alfea. She praises her old commander for her conviction and skill, and feels, in the end, somehow set free by the knowledge that she can grieve the loss of her mentor even as she rages against her cruelty and cunning. _It is so complicated_ , she thinks, _to love and hate the same person so deeply_.

**iii. they say that children become…**

…like their parents, and as she steps into her new role as Headmistress, Farah learns that she still has too much of Rosalind in her. For the first Exhibition of her tenure, Farah chooses to modify the three week ordeal she herself had been made to suffer annually - she’s cutting her students _so much_ _slack_ , even if they don’t know it.

Ben, always the diplomat, simply lifts an eyebrow at her plan, but Saul has no such qualms. He’d railed at her, pleading and pontificating, haranguing her in the halls every chance he got to give up the Exhibition entirely, or, failing that, to scale it down to nothing more than some comprehensive exam.

She’d scoffed. They may no longer be at war, but they are still _training_ for one, and she knows more than most that the fog of battle and fatigue that follows can turn even the most promising soldiers to mush. _They need to be ready_ , she vows to herself, _because the world will eat them alive if they are not_.

In the end, Farah settles on a simulated war game to last a full fortnight, dividing her students into teams tasked with protecting their assigned corners of the castle whilst infiltrating their neighbours’ territories to retrieve hidden objects. Betrayal still burned deep on her soul, she instructs the anxious teenagers that they may not reveal which team they have been assigned to. _No_ , she says, they must use their skills to determine their peers’ loyalties for themselves. How they do it, she doesn’t particularly care – she hadn’t managed to see Rosalind for what she was until it was too late, so who is she to judge? _She hopes they’ll come up with something good, because she plans to take notes for herself_.

It takes just two days for the college to descend into chaos. The students rapidly begin to resemble raccoons, skulking around in the shadows with dark purply circles beneath their eyes. They begin to get twitchy, even at meal times – constantly looking over their shoulders and jumping at the slightest noise. Stories start to swirl of nervous breakdowns in the bathrooms, of complicated plots being hatched, and even of an enterprising young earth fairy that has hidden herself so deeply in the jungle greenhouse that she may have lost herself in the process.

Saul sees that his passion will get him nowhere – he is a strong wind come up against Farah’s granite cliffs, and she will not yield to his howls. It takes him a week of watching paranoia seep into very stones of the school before he thinks to try plain old kindness instead. 

He wakes before dawn, and waits outside her door, knowing as surely as the sun sets in the west that she’ll slip out to patrol Alfea’s perimeter before the students start to stir. He bites his tongue when he finally sees her, recognising the stubborn set of her face for the challenge that it is and wisely choosing to bide his time. In silence, they set out together, hands brushing ( _by_ _accident_ ) every so often and breath clouding in the crisp morning air.

He waits until they’re as far from Alfea as possible, backs practically against the Barrier and college distant on the horizon. Then, he places a gentle hand on her shoulder and for a moment, leaves it there, willing her to feel the words he wants to say so he does not accidentally wound her pride ( _because she_ should _be proud_ , he thinks fiercely, _for blazing a new way for them all into the light_ ).

He’s no mind fairy, but in the weak morning light he can see her clear through – she is driving the students not from zealotry, as Rosalind had, but from fear. Fear that she will fail them, that softness in school will leave them vulnerable to the hard edges of life. She wants better for them than they had, but he needs her to know that things have changed. She is _safe_. They all are. And then he wonders, perhaps, if she cannot recognize their safety _because she has never felt it before._

Even as he curses Rosalind’s memory, the old bat gives him one last gift. Rosalind has given him purpose yet again, from beyond the veil. First, they need to end the Exhibition early, before students or staff get accidentally murdered. But then, h _e’ll make her safe_. Until the breath leaves his body, he will keep Farah safe, because he has every faith that it is _Farah_ who will make _them_ safe.

**iv. the burned one…**

…and its rogue helper are her nightmares made real, and she is wound tight as a spring as they hurry back to the school. She feels a strong urge to _flee_ , as fast as she can, to the safety of her office and a strong cup of tea. The responsibility she feels for Alfea is suffocating her, and she hates how helpless she feels against the rising tides of darkness she senses at their door.

She’s barely caught her breath before Saul is on her. He is, strangely, the more adept planner between them, unhindered by the same doubts that plague her. He will not let her avoid this.

“I spoke to my contacts in the other realms, there's been no other sightings of Burned Ones,” he says.

She heaves a sigh of relief, praying he’ll leave this _alone_ instead of chasing down every answer she’d rather not learn, to every question she wishes they hadn’t asked. Ignorance is bliss.

“So this was all just a fluke?”

And Saul is rightly wary, of both her uncharacteristic naïveté and the thought of what even a single Burned One come back may mean.

“Maybe? But it’s a dangerous fluke.”

He’s right, of course, and she doesn’t want to hear it. She wants to close her eyes and just this once, _not deal with it_. She is scared again, after sixteen long years, and part of her wishes she had no part in this. _Is it too late_ , she wonders deliriously _, to build them a cabin on some deserted island?_ She pivots away from him, reticence in every line of her body, so he cannot see the shame plastered on her face. But Saul has never kept the truth from her, and he refuses to start today.

“The capital’s prison is more secure than ours, and the Queen would scan its memories, if you asked.”

“This is _my_ school, Saul.”

He's not sure where her territoriality is coming from, but he barges roughly past it all the same. This time, he needs her to take his approach, _from the start_. “Yes, it’s a _school_ , and there’s already gossip. And it’s only a matter of time before the kids cross the Barrier to find it.” He’s speaking quickly, too quickly for her to squeeze in even a single point of rebuttal. “ _Please, let’s do this right?_ ”

His lilting accent has thickened, and she chafes at the memories of her past plans gone haywire hiding behind his words. It feels like _weakness_ , to agree to his plan – to let Luna know that her school feels hazardous, that maybe she’d let their war-footing slip too far – that perhaps, Luna’s harsh methods could have prevented something like this where hers have not. She frets about whether Ricky was merely Stella’s Aster Dell, a lesser evil that a more seasoned commander would have no qualms about crushing.

“Let me make arrangements with the Queen’s army to transport it safely,” he tells her, softer now, willing her with every fiber of his being to see that she need not carry every burden by herself. _If they are to be a school that is no more than a school_ , he muses, extending an arm to gather her gently to his side, _then they must learn to leave the messiness of conflict to those who have chosen combat_. That is, after all, the promise of the Alfea that he and Farah and Ben have built together – the promise that their students may have a choice in their paths, that they may know love and warmth and the beautiful ordinariness of a boring life, before they shed such innocence forever.

He holds her against him until he feels acceptance settle into her shoulders, and when he feels the tension dissipate, he cannot help but press a grateful kiss into the sweep of her hair. They’ll get through this together – just as they always have.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm obsessed with farah's quiet strength, but love that the show recognises that none of the adults are perfect. no extra cameos from baby terra, tonight (see my other fic if you need another hit :P) but drop me a comment/kudos/a 3+1 prompt because that seems like all i'm capable of writing, and i'll give it a whirl!


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